As we saw in the gameplay footage from before Skyrim was released.. there's the special animation dragons can do when crashing into the ground after being killed in mid-air and whatnot. I wanna do that since it is apparently possible and kewl as hail.

However, in my 200 hours of gameplay vs. 30+ dragons.. I've never been able to shoot one out of the sky.. for one simple reason: They stay on the ground when their health is low.

So, to bypass this.. what are you supposed to do? Forge/enchant/poison a ridiculous bow? Shoot a trilion Ice Spears before they can land? I mean.. once their health's low they land and don't get back up to fly unless you hide from them, they regain some health, and fly again.


So yeah.. if anyone knows how you're realistically supposed to kill a dragon while it's flying without going at Smithing/Enchanting/Alchemy like a psychopath.. let me know.

If you wound a dragon enough it will crash, but I have never seen one die in flight. The burrowing of the ground is neat, but every time I have seen it was because the dragon was able to fly off after having been badly beaten with a weapon, or shield bashed on a soup enhanced character.

Basically you have to hit them as hard as you possibly can when they stop in one place but just float there (ie, when they do that animation like they're going to land but they stay up in the air) and once you get them to about 10% of their health they'll fly around and find a place to crash.

Very hard to do this later in the game, but if you're strong enough early on you might see it a lot.

I've done it. Combine Mark of Death with a Vampiric Bow & ebony arrows with Archery max enhancing gear. I thought I was going to get flamed again and switched to swd and shield and it crashed into the side of the mountain dead, and tumbled down the side of the mountain.

It wasn't dead, they crash land when their health is low.
Once i was fighting a dragon on a mountain side and it was bugging out looking for a place to crash...apparently they only crash land on land you can walk on

i make them crash a lot, their health just has to be really low.

I see the crash landing animation a lot. I'm playing a mage.

Intriiiiguing. Gracias.

this.

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. I think they do more often when you one-hit kill them with a bow, at a word wall. They'll crash directly into the ground.
Sometimes it gets glitchy and the corpse will vanish into the ground, sometimes they do about 20 spirals way, way into the air until they're just a speck. Then they crash really hard.

When I get a kill shot while they are still in air, they do one loop around and then usually crash near me and slide to a stop. But then their corpses usually flop around or end up half in the ground or a wall. Game mechanics dont seem to like it when you kill them when they are still in the air. On most of my characters I am unable to kill them while they are air born, I usully get the landing with low health and then I finish them off on the ground. If youve done the maxed alch/enchant/smithing loop it becomes very easy to get kill shots in the air. On follow up characters Ive avoided this as the game becomes very lame even on master difficulty when your weapons and poisons are so powerful.

I only ever took down one dragon with my bow since I'm mainly a warrior, but holy hell was that fun. He was hanging over a word wall just chilling, I snuck up on him and shot with my Daedric bow (legendary) with 343 damage and x3 damage with sneak. He instantly flew up, flew around a couple times, and slammed into the ground. For some reason I didn't get his soul (I assume that's a bug), but I hardly need it anyway with maxing out all my shouts and still having 50 souls in reserve.

Really if anything raise alchemy and smithing, and maybe even enchanting. Get a 127% archer boost potion and some 191 poison damage and you'll easily get crash animations.